ASSOCIATED PRESS
Randy Saaf, president and chief executive of MediaDefender Inc., poses looking at the Napster Web site. MediaDefender uses decoys along with other measures to thwart online efforts to pirate coyrighted material.
Profiting off piracy
Small companies work
to disrupt downloads
NEW YORK >> Next time you try to download the latest pop tunes over the Internet, don't be surprised if you get a message chewing you out as a thief.
Chances are, the digital reprimand would be the work of Randy Saaf or Marc Morgenstern, whose small companies belong to a budding cottage industry devoted to thwarting file-sharing and other Internet piracy.
Sowers of decoy files and digital detectives, these agents of entertainment and software companies tend to work stealthily, at their clients' behest.
Morgenstern, president of Overpeer Inc., said his year-old, 15-employee company in New York fools would-be pirates some 300 million times a month by flooding file-sharing networks with decoys, mostly masquerading as popular songs.
Some decoys are blank, circulated to make real files harder to find. Others carry warnings or other messages. An embedded programming script might even take individuals expecting free songs and movies to a Web site where they are sold.
Though neither Saaf nor Morgenstern would name clients, Madonna fans who tried to download her new song this spring instead heard from the singer, "What the ---- do you think you're doing?"
Saaf, president of MediaDefender Inc., said his Los Angeles company also tries to tie up queues by posing as real users who want to download large files through slow modems.
MediaDefender's engineers -- previously in the business of foiling radar systems for the Pentagon -- began thinking of ways to stymie file-sharing three years ago just as the recording industry began its legal fight to end Napster, Saaf said. Its tactics, he said, aim to make downloading so frustrating that people simply give up.
Other companies, like BayTSP Inc. and Ranger Online Inc., use software to seek out pirated materials at peer-to-peer, or P2P, networks along with chat rooms, newsgroups and Web sites. Another group that includes BigChampagne LLC measures the scope of P2P trafficking.
Many executives in the anti-piracy game say music labels, movie studios and other content creators have only recently taken their services seriously, and some have disappeared or shifted their business focus in the meantime.
Yet demand for such companies will likely grow after the recording industry threatened last month to file hundreds of lawsuits seeking monetary damages against individuals who share songs.
The Business Software Alliance, a trade group that includes Microsoft Corp. and other leading software makers, is also a client.
The software industry has increased its infringement notice output 20 times since it began using such an automated system from MediaSentry Inc., said Bob Kruger, the alliance's vice president for enforcement.
"I guess it's good that somebody is somehow making some money off P2P piracy," Kruger said, noting irony. "A lot of (other) companies are losing money."
Ranger counts the Motion Picture Association of America among its clients, while BayTSP's customers include Adobe Systems Inc. Intelligence from BayTSP ultimately led to the arrest of a Russian programmer who made software for breaking copy protections on Adobe electronic books. BayTSP also works for two major movie studios it won't name.
The anti-piracy specialists are generally secretive about their techniques and clients, citing confidentiality clauses. Overpeer's Web site features nothing more than contact information. One California company, NukePirates, wouldn't disclose its location (it uses a P.O. box) or size.
"Right now, we're kind of an unknown," said Chuck Gurley, managing partner for the company, which tries to locate and close software piracy sites. "They don't know if I've got a staff of five or 50, which comes to be an advantage at times."
Matt Oppenheim, a senior vice president at the Recording Industry Association of America, wouldn't comment on specific services or techniques used, but said they supplement what copyright owners can do on their own.
"Sometimes they offer services that are just more efficient," he said.
Anti-piracy specialists can respond to technical changes more quickly than the industries' in-house operations, said Phil Leigh, digital media analyst with Raymond James and Associates.
Their practices aren't without controversy, particularly after Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., sought legislation to give entertainment companies license to interfere with file trading. Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, added fuel recently by suggesting that computers used for illegal downloads might be destroyed remotely.
Overpeer and MediaDefender deny doing anything that resembles hacking, and Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that is the case. "This is their business, and if they went over the line, it would be betting the whole farm for them," he said.
There is, nonetheless, "a whole subculture of clock-and-dagger guys" -- individuals believed to be researching even more aggressive techniques, including spreading damaging viruses over file-sharing networks, von Lohmann said.
Most typically, however, the entertainment industry pressures Internet providers to shut down illegal file-swappers -- or to hand over the names of the individuals so it can pursue them.
And for their role in the hunt, companies like BayTSP have drawn the wrath of people who consider Internet music downloads their birthright.
Internet users even circulate intelligence on these companies on Web sites and in discussion groups.
The countermeasures assure steady work for the likes of BayTSP, said its chief executive, Mark Ishikawa.
"There's always going to be a bad guy," he said.
